Day 3

Day 3

Limonad is in the Northern Part of Haiti, right outside of the biggest Northern City, Cap Haitian. As stated in the other blogs, our Hostess, Gabby Vincent, lives about an hour away from our sites at RAFAVAL (the womens’ group chocolate factory) and the start up school, CIMA. Every day we have been taking Taptaps, which are the colorful trucks that are the Haitian form of taxis. Here’s a picture of one:

They are not the most comfortable of vehicles, but have been awesome for team bonding and sitting really close together. Lots of arms have been placed around each other, and many games of Essence have been played. As Kylee has mentioned, the roads are terrible with massive potholes and a lot of the time are made of dirt/mud and gravel.

Today (Wednesday the 4^th), we left in the rain after a delicious breakfast of coffee, spaghetti and bananas, hahaha. The roof of the Taptap was leaking on Timmy’s shoulder, as well as Kylee who was sitting across the way. Luckily, Nick brought mobile speakers that he had gotten for Christmas (thank you Nick’s family!) and we were rocking out on our way to RAFAVAL. I’m sure many Limonadians thought that the group of dancing Blancs in the back of the taptap were out of their mind, but it helped pass the time while we got wet and were rocked around by pot holes.

Once we arrive at RAFAVAL, the business group (Taylor, Nick, Katie, Melody and Brian) went into their office with Patrick (our translator) and interviewed many of the administration and the workers of the chocolate factory. They argued a little bit about the feasibility of the business, but reached an agreement on many of the issues. They started to make ledgers to track how much of the product the factory was selling each day, and started to make other forms to organize the positions and hierarchy within the business. I was not part of the group, but I believe that was the gist of what they accomplished.

The education group (Kylee, Hannah, Timmy and Me) met up in a different room within RAFAVAL and interviewed the teachers of CIMA with our Hostess, Gabriel, who started Sonje Ayiti (the organization that we went through to help both CIMA and RAFAVAL). Gabriel translated for us and we asked them basic questions about the school. They have 50-some kindergarteners and 1^st graders. They are learning basic reading and writing, math, singing and history, as well as social skills and how to interact in more formal settings. We found that school is looked upon as a luxury, especially in this severely poor community. Almost no one can afford to go to school, private or public, let alone get past elementary school. We asked the teachers what they needed from us. Besides a school that isn’t hosted within a ripping tent and clean water, they needed help organizing the content they were teaching, so the children would more easily pass the government exams to move up in grades. We set up to make up a basic lesson plan template for the teachers in which they could list the objective for the lesson, pre-evaluate what the students already know, instruct the lesson and evaluate how much the students took in (the OPIE model).

For lunch we had tuna sandwiches with some spicy seasoning. It was delicious. Once we rode back to Gabby’s in the taptap, it would around 4 in the afternoon. We took a nap and had an awesome dinner of seasoned rice, fish with heads, tails and bones (despite the disgusting display, was REALLY delicious).

We did reflection in the boys room and talked about our overall goals for the trip and how they were still being applied in each group. After reflection, we played several games of MAFIA which I was a terrible mayor for. We also did some planning for the next day and put several charts and plans on our computers.

So that is all from Day 3. We are having an awesome time and are in good hands.

Having the experience of our lives,

Billy and the WM Haiti Compact.